Water sampling on St. Lucie River estuary to expand starting Monday

STUART — Samplings of water from the St. Lucie River estuary to test for bacteria will become more frequent and more widespread on Monday, the 48th day since environmentally damaging freshwater releases from Lake Okeechobee began.

The state Health Department typically samples water at the Roosevelt Bridge in Stuart every two weeks. An extra $12,740 a year from the state will allow those samplings to be increased to weekly and will add weekly sampling sites at:

The west end of the Palm City Bridge near Leighton Park.

Sandsprit Park near the boat ramp.

North of Bessey Creek near the Harbour Ridge neighborhood.

The water samples are tested for enterococcus bacteria, which indicates fecal pollution.

State Sen. Joe Negron announced Thursday afternoon he had secured the state funding a week after citizens at a meeting of the Rivers Coalition in Stuart requested more frequent water sampling.

"The public has a right to know if the St. Lucie River has become so polluted that it poses a health risk to our community," the Stuart Republican said in a prepared statement.

The Army Corps of Engineers began releasing water from Lake Okeechobee on Sept. 19 at a rate of 24 million gallons an hour. The flow doubled to about 1.2 billion gallons a day before dropping Thursday to nearly 550 million gallons a day.

The releases are designed to prevent potentially catastrophic flooding around the lake; but the influx of polluted, silt-laden fresh water into the brackish estuary has dropped salinity levels, killed oyster beds and has been linked to dangerous bacteria levels.

In mid-October, the Martin County Health Department posted signs under the Roosevelt Bridge warning people to stay out of the water because of high levels of enterococcus bacteria.

The samples taken at the bridge Oct. 22, the most recent available on the department's website, rated the water quality as "poor."

"It's going to be helpful to monitor more sites for bacteria," Mark Perry, executive director of the Stuart-based Florida Oceanographic Society, said Thursday afternoon. "For one thing, we'll know if there are areas besides under the (Roosevelt) Bridge that might need to be closed to human contact."

Perry said comparing levels at different sites also will help determine the source of the bacteria "by telling whether it's coming into the estuary from the North Fork (of the St. Lucie River) or from the South Fork or from Lake Okeechobee through the (St. Lucie) Canal."